(for Bertice)
A close friend of mine, a Sociologist, writer, and clergywoman, shared something recently that I cannot shake. In her search within the Library of Congress for slave narratives, she discovered multiple accounts of slave masters on their deathbeds, begging forgiveness from their slaves. In every account, the slaves granted it. “They are the soul of our nation”, she said. Gripped by fear and greed, each master, from whom they asked forgiveness, refused to free them, instead leaving them to their children. Savage wounds are handed down and the white ancestors cannot rest. The cost is great.
The young rabbi reframes one of the commandments and then deepens it. In order to follow along this narrow way, he calls us to “hate” our parents, our family, even life itself.* A breathtaking cost. In this great and frightening reversal, a challenge is born. With a reckless freedom to love others as if they were our kin, even the hardest of hearts can break open. Our souls crave the release that comes when we stop othering. This declaration comes not in defiance of our family or our own lives, but to expand our relational field, opening us to the luminous portal within every human face.
I imagine our third eye opening wide like the aperture of a camera, seeing farther than the naked eye, exposing everyone as family. When we see this, we are brought to new life, born again into a great tribe of lovers who have responded to this call. Is it naive to wish or imagine such freedom? It may be the greatest stone on which the Kin-dom of God is built.
